


World-Eater

by SassafrassRex (Serbajean)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Now-au, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Tumblr exodus in case it becomes a ghost town, What-If, locked in syndrome, mild body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-09-13 05:31:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16886544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serbajean/pseuds/SassafrassRex
Summary: He did this for them. And he won't give up calling, no matter how long Black takes to answer.





	World-Eater

There is Altean royalty shouting in his ear. A fleet of ships waiting at his back.

All useless. All helpless, so he presses the Black faster.

It’s just a payload. He has to think of it like that. If he’d considered the truth of it, he would never have found the courage to urge his Lion forward and rip the thing loose from its holdings.

Over the surface of Ondarset hovers the arnaith. A ravenous, indefatigable force of nature. No teeth, no face, nothing resembling a body, yet it stands as an apex predator throughout the galaxy. And when weblum and other large prey run scarce, it’s been known to hunt elsewhere.

_Arnaith — World-Eater_

But they can kill it. For perhaps the first time in recorded history, they can kill it. Their Lions have taught them how. 

The arnaith is a soul without shape. A void that thinks. There exists no physical weapon that could ever be brought against it. But their Lions are old. Their Lions have shared space with these beasts since time immemorial.

So, today they can kill it. This innocuous vessel the Black carries between his teeth—this storm of quintessence, manifested into spellwork and wrapped around a single focus—is the weapon they have brought to bear. Sat this close, he can feel the _burn_ of it even safely inside his Lion.

And when it goes off, the arnaith falls. And the nine billion people of Ondarset live to see another suns’ rise.

And as to its deliverer, there will be a drifting ship. The grim warnings from Ondarset engineers come back to him in detail. A drifting ship manned by a corpse with two scorched holes where its eyes had been. The remnants of a soul, caught standing too close when a corner of the universe ended.

He likes to hope his Lion will survive. That _too close_ for him, might not be too close for his timeless Lion, whose vastness he has only just begun to understand.

Voices scream through his headset. Four of them, furious with him because _get back here now!_ Because what does he think he’s doing,  _stop, come back!_ Because  _please don’t do th-_

He pulls his helmet off. He can’t listen to them.

This is the unspoken agreement they have. They listen to him, they follow his directives. And in return for that? In return, he keeps them alive, however he can. So, he clenches his teeth and pushes the Black still faster, because he can’t let himself turn back now. Whatever it may take, it’s his job to get them home. That’s his purpose. That’s _their_ purpose—both his and the Black’s—ever since the Lions gave themselves to Altea and Alfor built them into being.

The Black growls a rumbling affirmation, fierce with a love for the rest of the pride.

He bows his head low, shuddering under the familiar sensation of something in him ripping loose. Tearing itself free with a sharp, _painful_ satisfaction as the Black Lion’s wings burst into being, to speed them on their way.

Finally, finally, they release the focus and he watches it sink. And the Black tosses his head back with one last roar of defiance, flung in the face of a deathless storm that is _going to die._

It dies today.

They turn and they try to run. Of course they try, he wouldn’t martyr himself. But the arnaith’s too big and they’re too heavy. The empty vacuum of space becomes as a quagmire. The wings cannot open, they limp away too slow.

Too slow for him.

His back thumps against his seat, breath coming sharp. Now, he lets himself think of them. His paladins, the family he didn’t mean to find. He pictures four smiling faces, who are going to live through this. Who are going to live to hate him for this.

It hits home with an inelegant shock that he doesn’t want to die. For a long time, he’d thought he didn’t care. That so long as his work was done it wouldn’t matter. That perhaps he’d been too damaged, perhaps in his quietest heart of hearts, there wasn’t enough of him left to truly bother with keeping.

Yet, the thought of them makes his chest tighten with the realization that he doesn’t want to go. It rises in his throat, higher and higher until he’s choking on tears. He’s going to die and he is frightened—

 _No_.

—He’s so, so frightened. His hands fist around his Lion’s controls, he can’t keep from shaking. The arnaith looms above, shapeless malice, old like his Lion is old. He trembles, a tiny mortal caught between a pair of singularities.

 _Be brave_.

Quiet as a breath of wind. From his Lion, whose roar shakes the firmament, he hears this simple whisper. Love and sorrow course down their bond to wrap round him in benediction. Strength weighing a thousand stars lands featherlight upon his heart to ward him against his fears. This, the last blessing his Lion will give him. A whisper of courage for the mortal about to be snuffed out.

The focus detonates. Small at first then growing exponentially, the freely given quintessence of a solar system’s worth of people. It blooms outwards in a fire as real and inexorable as any physical force. Burning straight through the trespasser to sear life back into the withered planet below.

Mind already bending, he asks, _Stay with me?_ He doesn’t want to die alone.

Love flows from the Black to hold him, affirm him; love like his mind can’t grasp. A low purr rumbles up, overflowing everything else, _drowning_ everything else. Extinguishing every part of him, until he can disappear into his Lion where he’s always belonged.

 _I’m here_.

His Lion clutches him close as the end comes.

And then there’s weight. And heat. And impossible pressure. He feels _something_ seize them both. Something dark and dying, vengeful in its deaththrows. Something that winds its way around his spine, hooks itself beneath his lungs like it will _never_ let him go.

And it seizes the Black. His immutable Lion, his unstoppable Lion who promised him.

_Black, don’t leave me._

A scream tears from his mouth as he feels the pass of dragging claws. Dug in deep, shredding through his mind as his Lion _fights_ to keep hold of him.

 _Please,_ he doesn’t want to die alone. Bright beautiful quintessence burns without stopping, weight and heat to melt him away. It’s pain like he never could have imagined. He can’t feel the controls under his hands. He can’t feel anything of himself.

But inside, he sobs when the strength of his Lion finally fails. And their minds are wrenched apart.

And he’s left all alone, when his universe ends.

 

*** 

 

But he’s not.

But it doesn’t.

Or if it does, it doesn’t happen right.

 

***

 

He thought he knew hell.

He can’t move. Not his feet, not his hands, not his fingers, not his head. He cannot even open his eyes, if anything remains of them. He can think. He can think enough to wonder why he is still burning? Why isn’t he finished? Sometimes he can hear, if only just, if only in pieces. He cannot speak. He can’t feel anything, only the burning. He lies wide awake. Straining to hear, to feel anything outside himself. Why isn’t he gone? He tries to scream and hears only silence and the frustration is beyond measure.

He waits in the dark. This was their space. _Their_ plane, his and his Lion’s. Just the two of them, but now he’s alone and even the stars have left.

 _Black,_ he calls into the quiet. _Black, where are you?_

What happened to them back there? Where is the Black, where is his Lion, where is he, where is he, _where?_

_Black!_

What does he need to do? How can make this stop?

 _What do you need?_ He’s always asked that when they were facing trouble, _what do you need from me, what should I do?_ And the Black has always answered it, so why won’t he now?

_Let me help, I promise I can._

The dark has its fingers curled round his neck, he doesn’t know how he’ll ever be rid of them. Please, he’s burning, how can he breathe with this weight?

_Please, talk to me._

But there’s nothing. His Lion can’t or won’t reach him.

Sometimes his awareness stretches. Just for a breath, just for an instant, he’ll sense a presence nearby. Almost as though he could see them—shimmering shades of blue and red. Yellow and green. They pass in and out, wavering. And he reaches for them. The tattered remnants of his mind clamber after theirs, grasping at the bonds that mean  _friend,_ that mean _family,_ that mean _his,_ that mean _Voltron._

Nothing.

They’re there, he knows that they are. If he could, he would sob for them to just reach back. Please, just to meet him halfway…

But he can’t.

They don’t.

He strains, he tries. Furious and more than half-mad already, he tries to fight his way to them. But they break apart like reflections on rippled water. He promised to be there for them why won’t they answer?

Is it because of what he did? Is this punishment for not stopping?

If they’re near him, he can’t see it. If they touch him, he can’t feel it. He can’t scream, he can’t sob. He can’t beg them for an end. He thought he knew hell.

Will they leave him like this? He knows his lungs are still breathing, his heart, still beating. Will they leave him to linger here? He did this for them.

When they peel his ruined eyes open, something like tears spill out. But he can’t tell, he doesn’t feel it.

 

_Master Paladin?_

_Oh. Finally, you’re here._

_Yes. Ondarset owes you very dearly._

 

He’s kept up his calling,  _Black?_ As faithfully and tirelessly as he can, calling, _Black! Black!,_ his beautiful Lion. And he begins to wonder,  _Are you still?_

But it was a promise. That he’d never give up on his Lion, so he doesn’t stop calling. Time passes. Voices change, but he does not stop.

He thinks he should have gotten used to the burning by now.

 

_Master Paladin._

_Yes, come in. Please, come in_.

 

The woman’s voice is quiet. Someone new. He wishes they would send her away. There’s nothing she can do, she won’t be the first to have tried.

_How is he alive?_

He imagines her standing above him, hands outstretched, taking in the damage done. He wants her to go away.

— _if he’d been in any other ship besides his Lion_ —

Then why didn’t his Lion protect him? Why is he here, where is the Black now? More than anything, he wishes he could ask, _where?_

The woman lingers, he doesn’t know how long. Perhaps she leaves and returns. Perhaps days pass, perhaps years pass, he doesn’t know.

Locked inside his head, he still screams, _Black, please help me._  He screams for the paladins, but they never reach back for him. At the sound of their voices, he tries so hard to speak. To say anything to them, anything at all.

They always leave. They will not suffer him.

But this strange, quiet woman lingers. She comes back again and again. Sometimes he’ll think she’s left, only to hear her steady voice murmur again, still with him. But he doesn’t want her, he wants the Black.

He thought he knew

 

***

 

He learns to mark the time by her coming to him. He likes to imagine that one day he’ll have eyes to open. And he’ll open them, and somehow his paladins will be there in her stead. He tries to scream for them, he cannot move. He cannot move.

_“Can you do anything?”_

He hears their voices less and less often. It’s been a long while since he last sensed their ghosts brush by his mind, out of reach, unwilling to wait for him. He is a thing to visit. And eventually, they stop visiting.

He would sob if only he could, when he finally realizes that they’ve left him here. They’ve left him, his Lion has left him here to burn.

What he wouldn’t give, just to see them.

 

_“Can you help him?”_

He tries so very hard not to hope in her. She has remained for so much longer than anyone else. It is a mercy he doesn’t understand. And it makes it so hard to keep his traitor heart from hoping.

_“I promise I will try.”_

If anything has changed, he doesn’t feel it.

 

***

 

Until he does.

She’s come to see him again. Hers is the only voice he ever hears, anymore. 

He still calls for his Lion, when he can find the energy.  _Please…_ he still tries. But in this plane, there is no Lion. He waits, burning like he always burns, alone in the dark.

Until he’s not. 

Until he feels it, the slight brush of something cool. Just a flicker, fleeting and gone. The barest, briefest hint of relief.

He tries not to hope. He’s burned for so long.

The first day he feels her fingers on his face—light and slender, wonderfully chilled against the heat in his skin—he wishes he could leap. That he could gasp and give a shout. But he can’t.

He begins to call for his Lion again, more frantic, more insistent. Couldn’t he be getting better? He shouldn’t hope, he knows he’s ruined. But if he could. If he could _just_ get better again, then perhaps the Black—

There’s still nothing. There is always nothing, his Lion has left.

He lays awake, unable to so much as twitch. The woman’s touch travels up the sides of his face until she reaches his eyes.

“Oh,” and her hands still. “Pain,” she whispers. The cool brush of her fingers would make him sob if _only he could_.

“Such. Such terrible pain, how have you borne it?” Her voice comes closer, a whisper next to his ear,

“I will help you,” she says. “Master Zarkon, I promise I will help you.”

 

***

 

Shiro wakes in a panic with soul clawing up his throat. His chest heaves on clogged noises that barely sound human. His legs kick, there’s open air at his back and Shiro is falling to the floor—

But the floor moves. Smooth metal angles itself to catch him, Shiro recognizes the skin of his Lion. He tears his hands loose from where they claw at his scalp. He grabs at the Black and holds on with everything he has.

It had been late. He’d come down here to be with the Black. He’d climbed up and he must have nodded off…

Cheek pressed to the cool surface of his Lion’s paw— _blessedly_ cool, he feels like he’s on fire—Shiro peers up over his shoulder. He touches gaze with two bright yellow lights that somehow carry a sadness older than he can understand. _What just happened?_

The Black tells him at a whisper. This bond between them. Strong and close, it is a wonderful gift. But as it deepens—as Shiro draws ever nearer—he will see more and more of those who stepped before him. He won’t be able to help it.

This isn’t Shiro’s to carry. This _shouldn’t_ be Shiro’s to carry, and the Black would never ever have given it to him.

His breath rushes so fast he thinks he’ll be sick. His Lion holds him close and he still feels himself burning.

Shiro clutches tight to the Black. And sobs, because he can.

 

 


End file.
